RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Balanced excitation and inhibition decorrelates visual feature representation in the mammalian inner retina
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 040642
DO 10.1101/040642
A1 Franke, Katrin
A1 Berens, Philipp
A1 Schubert, Timm
A1 Bethge, Matthias
A1 Euler, Thomas
A1 Baden, Tom
YR 2016
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/03/22/040642.abstract
AB The retina extracts visual features for transmission to the brain. Different types of bipolar cell split the photoreceptor input into parallel channels and provide the excitatory drive for downstream visual circuits. Anatomically, mouse bipolar cell types have been described down to the ultrastructural level, but a similarly deep understanding of their functional diversity is lacking. By imaging light-driven glutamate release from more than 11,000 bipolar cell axon terminals in the intact retina, we here show that bipolar cell functional diversity is generated by the balanced interplay of dendritic excitatory inputs and axonal inhibitory inputs. The resultant centre and surround components of bipolar cell receptive fields interact to decorrelate bipolar cell output in the spatial and temporal domain. Our findings highlight the importance of inhibitory circuits in generating functionally diverse excitatory pathways and suggest that decorrelation of parallel visual pathways begins already at the second synapse of the mouse visual system.